


The Tiniest Crack Becomes A Flood

by ZenithMaguire



Series: Harold in Italy [1]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Depression, F/M, M/M, Pining, let's all feel awful why not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 06:14:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7423246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZenithMaguire/pseuds/ZenithMaguire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even though Grace tries to pull him forwards into his future, Harold can't stop staring back into his past, grasping at memories of John.</p><p>translation into mandarin available here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/7827679</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tiniest Crack Becomes A Flood

**Author's Note:**

> This is some 'let's all be really gloomy about John' stream-of-Harold's-consciousness thing. I was sad, ok? Please forgive a poor heartbroken rinch shipper.

It feels like almost every morning he wakes up in the middle of a conversation with John, smiling, talking about their friends. Then a coldness in his chest as the image sinks away.  
This time it’s worse. He’s at his desk in the IFT offices, it’s late and he’s talking to Nathan, happy, enthusiastic, in one of his giddy, late-night bursts of garrulousness. He turns to the screen to explain something he’s working on, and when he turns back, John is smiling at him, leaning back in the chair, his expression soft and fond.  
‘John, what are you doing here? It isn’t safe, you’re in the wrong place,’ he’s bewildered and inexplicably terrified, trying to communicate that this isn’t right, this isn’t how things are supposed to be, but he can’t explain why in any way that makes sense.  
‘It’s ok, Harold. Any exploit is a total exploit. You knew that.’  
Harold tries to think when he knew that, what it is that he knows, then the light is bright in his eyes, he’s on the floor, he’s fallen, and the pain-

He’s in his bed, in the little apartment he took after he found Grace again. It’s empty. 

She hadn’t grown angry, there weren’t any recriminations. Even when he made it clear that there were limits to what he could tell her, she was patient and kind, told him that all that mattered was that he was alive and that she understood, she believed him when he said he’d had to do what he did. She told him they had a chance to get to know each other again. When he expressed how lost, how homeless he was now she told him that he’d better stay here where he has a friend. No demands, only kindness. He can’t help but imagine how John would have reacted if Harold had ever put him through that grief and loss, that powerless not-knowing. Rages and moods that he had been excluded from danger, excluded from a painful and horrific decision. A temper that would probably have taken him round the world once or twice before he simmered down enough to come back. Harold half-smiles at the thought. He knows Grace still wants him to open up, to let it all out, and what he's most terrified of is blurting out anything that smacks of a comparison. 

He misses Nathan still, and Root, and Carter. He misses John more. Starting to talk, being expected to talk, is excruciating, and he feels he has to hide so much, it was easier when he had to conceal his entire existence, to be alone with the hurt. It was less painful when he felt less pressure. If he wanted John to know something he could leave a book on a shelf, a slip of paper lying around, and John would work out the rest for himself; he would never say what he knew but he would understand, silently. Grace is right about everything except she doesn’t really know how to be sick and in pain. John was always in pain.

Grace’s eyes are so bright, her face warm and open and expressive. He feels like he can’t give her much back. Harold makes conversation, dry and intelligent, but he performs pleasure, humour, without really feeling either. Before he’d pretended - no, lied to her - about his name and work, but now he has to fake his smiles, joy in every tiny thing they try to share. He isn’t the same, nothing tastes or looks or smells the same. Harold is tired. They meet in cafes, or sit in the galleries, and when he looks close to tears, Grace holds his hand. He feels fidgety sometimes but can’t pull away. She forgave him and he’s so grateful. 

Being with Grace isn’t the same. Or rather, she has only mellowed and Harold has gained scars, peculiarities. He finds things difficult, he can’t relax, he almost welcomes his worsening physical problems as a distraction. Italy seems different than it was when he was younger; it’s beautiful but it feels thin somehow, as if he weren’t really there. Books are growing thinner too. The words fly off the page like bullets. He hears the odd unfamiliar word in Italian and panics, thinking his mind is going like his father's did, before he catches himself, tells himself it’s only a gap in his knowledge of local dialect, not his memories being lost.

The beautiful dark-haired women remind him of Root and Shaw, and he smiles. He wonders if any Fuscos live here. John is there like a phantom in every shadow, unreachable. He’s monochrome, like New York, like hiding in the darkness, in the blind spots. Once Harold thought a man outside a cafe was John, just for a moment. Tall, dressed in black and white. He walked over to see his face, pretended to be photographing the architecture. He knew, he knew, but he had to see. He felt like he might faint.

The birdsong he wakes up to is beautiful but unfamiliar, he misses the birds in the park. The light, the rich colours are overwhelming, Grace’s delight in life is overwhelming. He avoids the sun, missing the soft glow of the subway, the dim shade of the library, when it was just the two of them. Grace smiles and laughs and touches where John whispered, blank-faced. It’s hot and he can’t wear as many layers as he would like. Being in light clothing, out in the open, he feels exposed, he misses the feeling of being held in tight. He sees a movement in the street, expects bullets, suddenly feels John’s absence, the loss of his protection. The silence in his ear is deafening; he feels the breeze move where he was so used to the earbud that was their constant link. It makes him feel cold despite the warmth of the air. So many times he's opened his mouth to say something, make some aimless remark as he struggles alone through a quiet street, about to begin 'Mr. Reese', but there's nothing there anymore, no one listening in.

He had been so wary of habit, of predictability, but with John he had imperceptibly shifted into being one person again, with one real home, someone who knew all of him, all of what mattered anyway. He hadn’t had that for such an extended time, except for with Nathan, with his father. He’d let himself become a creature of habit within those confined spaces, where they didn’t need to speak, and when they were on the move their voices hovered at each other’s ears, the connection of their shared work holding them fixed in orbit around each other every day. At the centre of their strange family he'd felt whole, alive.

Now he feels old, weak, epicene; he's cheated Grace: he's broken and difficult, when he's in pain he struggles not to snap, not to be terse. He wants to protect her from that part of him; he never had to worry with John, they fought, they played their games of hiding and secrets and mutual prying without having to hold back. The urgency of paranoia, of self-protection faded into a silent joke between them, as their trust grew. John wasn't afraid to get angry at him. He wishes Grace would, sometimes. He worries that she’s tiptoeing around this hole that’s been punched through him, that he might pull her through into that void, turn her into something different, someone who can’t see the sunshine any more, that the colours will flatten and fade for her too.

He doesn’t know how he could ever have thought John wouldn’t accept him: in the dreams his grey-blue eyes are so gentle, his voice low and calm. For so long he had assumed that John would have turned out a mistake like Nathan, a humiliation. To Nathan Harold was always the pudgy little nerd, the fussing eunuch who would be laughed at, endearingly harmless, entertaining but unthreatening. Even so he’d known John would be kind, he wouldn’t be insulting or call names. Harold had known he wouldn’t hit him, accuse him of being a harasser, a ‘predatory homosexual’ is the phrase that sticks in Harold’s mind from his youth. But Harold had told himself John couldn’t possibly reciprocate, even if he liked men, he wouldn’t…he wouldn’t. And that he would resent him, for not respecting the professional boundary between them. Harold remembers John’s face, his smile, his boundless love, and wonders how he could have thought that.

The food tastes too rich and the sun is too bright. The ice cream melts too quickly. He talks to Grace about Bear. That's a safer topic, it creates a little space in between them that then doesn’t need to be filled with anything else. She suggests maybe he should get a dog. She’s so enthusiastic he feels immediate regret at the idea. In the end he gives in to her encouragement and goes to the shelter, asks which dog has been waiting longest to be adopted. He exchanges one look with the elderly, grizzled part-Alsatian part-god-knows-what, and takes it home. That evening Grace excitedly asks what he's going to name it, but he can't think of anything yet. The sad old creature is quiet and subdued, something to keep safely between them when they meet. It falls peacefully asleep in the corner of his room that night, still nameless.

He’s in the library. John’s hands are on his shoulders. There is a rose in his buttonhole. Harold is crying and John is bending down to look at him with such tenderness. 'It’s ok, Harold. It’s ok. It’s just a simulation.' Harold tries to understand what this means, tries to believe John’s reassurances. Red roses are blossoming over John’s heart. His shirt is thick with deep red blooms. Harold can’t stop crying. Leaves are covering John’s face and Harold is panicking, trying to pull them away, scrabbling to reach through, terrified that John can’t breathe, that he’s being smothered under there, frantically trying to find him. He wakes up sobbing. The dog is licking his face. He tells him to get down but it comes out in Dutch. The tears stream down his cheeks as the sun moves across the sky.


End file.
